We have updated our Terms & Conditions. To continue, please confirm that you have read and accept these:

You have to agree to pocketmags.com's Terms & Conditions to proceed

This website use cookies and similar technologies to improve the site and to provide customised content and advertising. By using this site, you agree to this use. To learn more, including how to change your cookie settings, please view our Cookie Policy

Introducing Gregg Berman, EY Regulatory Guru

RiskMetrics entrepreneur turned SEC regulator hired by EY

In September 2015, EY hired RiskMetrics cofounder Gregg Berman a few months after his five years’ spell at the SEC. Berman had joined the US regulator in 2009 as part of SEC Chairwoman The Hon. Mary Schapiro’s initiative to bring in more people with industry, information technology and data analytics experience; Schapiro’s successor, Elisse Walter, and now current SEC Chair Mary Jo White continue to emphasise the importance of technology for uses such as analysing ‘Big Data’. Pre-crisis it had been unusual for the SEC to hire an entrepreneur, and would have seemed even more atypical as Princeton Physics PhD Berman was not a lawyer, economist or accountant. But Berman explains how “there has been a huge influx of different types of people with industry experience”.

He started in the SEC’s newly formed division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation; moved on to policy in the Division of Trading and Markets; and ended up as an Associate Director forming a new Office of Analytics and Research. Under the auspices of that new office, Berman implemented a new commission-wide system, dubbed the Market Information Data Analytics System (MIDAS), used to collect, process, and ultimately share with the public, analyses of billions of trade and order data records from our public equity exchanges.

Berman, who worked with some of the world’s largest asset managers at RiskMetrics, expanded this dialogue at the SEC and has many memories of his interactions with the industry. “We spent much time meeting hedge funds, banks and broker dealers to develop more informed rules. The big surprise for me was meeting with firms who were publicly advocating for additional rules and regulations,” according to Berman. During his time at the SEC Berman developed experience in securities regulation, market microstructure and market liquidity. Berman shared with THFJ some thoughts on latency, flash crashes, the new Regulation SCI, market liquidity, SEC proposals for mutual funds’ liquidity risk management and the rebates debate; just a small selection of the areas he advises on.

About The Hedge Fund Journal

INFORMING THE HEDGE FUND COMMUNITY
With access to some of the industry’s biggest names and an astute and talented group of writers and contributors, The Hedge Fund Journal has established itself as a trusted source of information on the hedge fund industry.